Personally I find "it's so dark" many times more a negative then a positive. I think Season 3 was a good season if you were a Lex or Lionel fan, and to a lesser degree Chloe, but it wasn't really that great a Clark season.

I been rewatching the series over the past couple month(I have like 12 episodes to go) and I personally find most my favorite episodes are ones where Clark has limited involvement with Lana and to a lesser degree Chloe, as well as they stay away from any bigger storylines. It seems like more often then not whenever Clark deals with a new character who is just on for that one particular episode as the main a-plot, that's when Clark comes off looking the best. It almost makes me wish the series was Clark traveling around from town to town meeting new people and helping them out. lol